The bill also seeks introduction of alternate subjects like home science and electronics. File Photo
The eight-year-old dyslexic child in Aamir Khan-starrer Taare Zameen Par earns recognition in the climax, but such an opportunity is not at the disposal of the country’s children with learning disabilities.
They are dubbed “failures” or “lazy” and this prompted NCP’s Rajya Sabha MP Vandana Chavan to introduce a private member’s bill in the Upper House recently to identify and support such children.
Vandana, a former mayor of Pune and a law graduate, is concerned that there is no adequate research to estimate the number of children with learning disabilities or funds to address their woes.
She wants certain concessions to such children in examinations - from providing 25% extra time to complete the paper to exemption from diagrams, charts and graphs.
In her Children with Specific Learning Disabilities (Identification and Support in Education) Bill, she also suggests that oral tests should be conducted along with written tests till Class X and the students must be promoted based on the average.
The bill proposes that such students be allowed to use calculators, and spelling or grammar errors and inconsistency in sentence construction be ignored.
It suggests that such students be exempted from learning second and third languages. In addition, it wants the standard of arithmetic to be relaxed as per the level of a student.
The bill also seeks introduction of alternate subjects like home science and electronics.
“This is a serious issue. The Bombay High Court has earlier issued guidelines but that is being followed in Maharashtra only. Very few people know about it. We need to take it to the national level,” Vandana told DH.
“After I introduced the bill, one of the MPs came to me to offer support. That MP’s child suffers from learning disabilities. The kid was sent to the US for education because there is no school here to cater to his needs. Another MP told me that he had learning disabilities,” she said.